


Peer Review

by checkmate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, M/M, bruce & tony meet at a science conference, that's it that's the whole fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 16:01:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10468758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkmate/pseuds/checkmate
Summary: "Don't play dumb with me, buddy. I was mid-presentation, blowing some minds, I might add, and then suddenly everyone is whispering among themselves and checking their phones andleaving the room! I'm standing like an idiot in front of an empty hall and then I find out that everyone is crammed into some talk by Bruce Banner, whoever the fuck that is, because I've never heard of him.”Bruce gets even more glares, as if it'shisfault that this man, exuding arrogance by the second, has never picked up one of his numerous, well regarded papers. “... So that's you, then.”Or, Tony and Bruce meet at a science conference.





	

“ _ You!”  _

Bruce blinks in surprise, staring at the apparently furious man standing in his hotel doorway. “Can I help you?” He says politely, blocking the entrance with his body just in case the stranger attempts to burst in. Bruce is pretty sure he's a stranger, at least, but something about his face does seem kind of familiar. 

“You're Bruce Banner!” The guy accuses, glaring at him with utmost dislike. 

Well. Maybe not strangers then, but as much as he wracks his brain Bruce can't figure out who this guy is, how they know each other, or exactly what he has done to make him so angry. “I know I am.” He replies, keeping his tone light, neutral, which only served to irritate the other man further. “Again, can I help you?” 

" _ You _ stole my audience!” He jabs a finger at Bruce's chest, stepping far closer than he's comfortable with, but Bruce resists the urge to pull away. 

“Excuse me?”

“This afternoon! Don't play dumb with me, buddy. I was mid-presentation, blowing some minds, I might add, and then suddenly everyone is whispering among themselves and checking their phones and  _ leaving the room _ ! I'm standing like an idiot in front of an empty hall and then I find out that everyone is crammed into some talk by  _ Bruce Banner _ , whoever the fuck that is, because I've never heard of him.” Bruce gets even more glares, as if it's  _ his  _ fault that this man, exuding arrogance by the second, has never picked up one of his numerous, well regarded papers. “So that's  _ you,  _ then.” After a head to toe appraisal, Bruce standing firmly in place, the guy steps back, and it suddenly clicks who the raging scientist in front of him is. 

“Oh my god.” He says, slower on the uptake than usual but hey, he's had a long day. “You're Tony Stark.”

This somehow only made Tony turn redder with barely contained rage, his hand, still extended, starting to shake. “What do you— yes, I'm Tony Stark! Anthony Edward Stark, certified genius, philanthropist, billionaire. Don't pretend you don't know who I am. Everyone knows who I am.” Bruce, actually, knows him more by personal reputation than by any academic one, their fields not overlapping much but gossip knowing no such limitations. He does know that there's a betting pool at these kind of events about just how many fellow speakers and/or attendees he might sleep with before the conference ends. 

“Right. Well. It was nice to meet you—” Bruce tries. He wants to sleep, needs to gather his energy for the busy scheduled day he put together from the official program, and doesn't need to be stuck in a conversation in his door, going in circles and wildly off track in equal amounts. 

But Tony wouldn't have that. “Hey. Hey! You don't get to— you stole my audience!” He insists again, grabbing onto Bruce's arm as he tries to shut the door in the man's face. 

“I presented my research.” Bruce corrects with a sigh. Sure, the attendance had been higher than he expected but he wouldn't exactly complain about that. “If people attended, I can only hope they thought it was worth their while.” 

“What's your field?” He interrogates, still refusing to let go. Bruce eyes him meaningfully, and Tony shoots him a look back, bargaining. Somehow, Bruce finds himself unable to argue with that determined forceful expression. 

“Gamma radiation.” He reveals eventually, because Stark could always look it up in the schedule later anyway. It isn't a secret, and not saying would be churlish. But it feels like he has given Tony a small victory when, with a cocky smile, he gets his arm back. 

Tony looks like he's struggling to hold back laughter. “Gamma radiation? Really? An unknown scientist giving a talk on gamma radiation emptied  _ my  _ presentation? Please. What are you actually working on? Fucking fusion rockets? Because I don't know much less that could pull people away from—” 

Bruce holds up a hand to interrupt him, and when that doesn't work, resorts to simply shouting louder. “I'm not researching fusion rockets! Look, I'm sorry if your audience was a bit small, but I didn't  _ steal  _ it. I just happened to be the unlucky idiot presenting their research at the same time as the great Tony Stark, and apparently some people found it interesting. If you're wondering why people left, maybe consider if the fault was on your end. Now, respectfully, good night, Mr. Stark.” 

Stark looks somewhat taken aback at this, but Bruce closes the door in his face before he can respond. Leaning against the door and wondering exactly what all that was about, Bruce flicks on the television and changes out of his best (and only) suit, ready to sleep. 

*

He is woken abruptly, too early, by a loud banging on his door. Bruce swears, cursing himself for forgetting to put out the Do Not Disturb sign, only to realise it is, in fact, on the door and he hadn't forgotten at all. The person knocks again. Clearly Do Not Disturb is not a sufficiently clear instruction, and Bruce has a feeling he might know who thinks it's okay to wake him up when the birds outside are only just beginning to sing. 

“Yes?” He says tiredly when he sees Tony Stark standing there, dressed in the exact same outfit from the previous night, his hair ruffled and out of place, the tie hanging loose around his neck. “It’s …” He checks his watch. “Five in the morning, Stark. What in God's name—” 

“Bruce Banner.” He states, and Bruce nods slowly, not sure what response there is to nothing but a dramatic statement of his name. Tony just stares at him, but eventually continues. “Dr Bruce Banner, PhD.” 

“I know my name, thank you.” He says coolly, finding it much harder to keep his temper when he is sleep deprived and before his first coffee.

“Nuclear physics, special focus on gamma radiation. Now you work on low environmental impact sources of nuclear power.” 

“Look, if you turned up here in the middle of the night just to tell me that you read my bio on the Culver website, I might just have to punch you.” Bruce manages to lighten his voice at the end just enough that he could pretend it was something more than a direct threat, but from the step back Tony takes, he thinks it might have been barely borderline. “Can I go back to sleep?” 

“Yesterday afternoon, you delivered a presentation on your current research, which stole my audience—” Tony holds up his hand to waive off Bruce's indignant and repeated protest, and Bruce, with gritted teeth, lets him continue. “And announce that you've managed to use nuclear radiation to create energy that is so clean you could eat your dinner off of it, with few to no environmental consequences. And I've never heard of you.” 

“Well, I think that's more your problem than mine.” Bruce counters. Tony stares at him, runs his hand through increasingly messy hair, and looks somewhat disbelieving and somewhat aghast. 

“I've never heard of you.” Tony repeats, each word enunciated slowly and carefully. Bruce isn't sure what to say to that, so plays it safe and says nothing. “How are you so calm? Don't you know what this could mean?” 

And objectively, Bruce does, but he's been in scientific research for long enough that he knows better than to get his hopes up. He knows his research is good, is new, is clearly inevitably sellable. It's also prohibitively expensive to carry out, and it's not like he's going to be getting government funding for expensive but environmentally friendly energy any time soon. Not in the current climate. “It means it will sit on a shelf in a remote scientific journal for the rest of its life.” Bruce shrugs. He stopped taking it personally years ago. 

Tony stares at him. “Can I come in?” He says abruptly, and Bruce can only stare back. Tony gestures, as if Bruce hadn't heard or hadn't understood, and, put on the spot, he can't think of a good enough reason to say no. Bruce steps back and allows Tony to cross over his threshold and shut the door behind him. 

Bruce folds his arms tightly across his chest, very aware of only the thin t-shirt and pajama bottoms he wore, and perches uncomfortably at the edge of the bed. Tony shifts his bag and jacket from the chair in the corner without troubling to ask and makes himself comfortable. “So.” Tony looks brightly at Bruce, who is struggling to control a yawn. “I can actually see why people left my talk for yours, and that's saying something.” He is unashamed in his arrogance, knowing his own value precisely and without question, but that doesn't make it any less insufferable. In Tony's mind, Newton and Rutherford and Einstein would come second to himself reading out of the phone book. Tony waits expectantly for Bruce to say something.

Bruce instead raises an eyebrow. “Are you expecting thanks for your seal of approval?” He asks incredulously, and while he's pretty sure that's exactly what Tony expected, he continued nevertheless. 

“It's brilliant.”

Bruce shakes his head, a tiny smile on his lips. “Oh, I'm aware.”

If Tony is shocked by Bruce's equal ability to be arrogant, he doesn't show it. “Then why are you happy to let it sit in a journal on a shelf for the next however many decades?” Tony demands, a personal affront to the scientific community and to Tony himself. 

“Because it'll cost hundreds of millions of dollars,  _ obviously _ . Billions, probably. Culver don't have that kind of money. No one had that kind of money. It's purely theoretical, I'm afraid.”

“This shit is too good to be left as purely theoretical.”

Bruce has, in his time, worked with plenty of scientists that for all the brains and the computational ability that led to their talent in their chosen field, did not have even the slightest brain for finance. It's not a difficult sum. Energy companies are the only ones who have that money kicking around for research. Bruce is anything but a statistician, but even he could see that the chance of an energy company shelling out billions on science that could, in the future, render their services totally unnecessary, is somewhere around… Well. Zero. 

When he reiterates this logic to Tony Stark, it doesn't wipe the shit eating grin off of his face in the slightest. 

“Energy companies? You can do better than that, Brucey.” 

Bruce wonders how they've apparently reached nickname levels of familiarity in such a short period of time. “I can't.” He says flatly, and stands up, hoping it will inspire Stark to do the same before he falls asleep where he sits. The other man must be exhausted, since it doesn't seem like he's slept for a second yet tonight, but he doesn't follow Bruce's lead and stays seated. He twists in his chair to continue looking at Bruce intently, then reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out—

“Oh, come on.” Bruce snorts, unable to help himself. The set up is just all too heavy handed. “Who the hell still carries around cheque books these days?” 

Tony flips it open, grabs a hotel stationery pen from the dresser next to him, and scrawls something on to the top line. “How much do you think you'll need to get started on this properly? Your own lab, a good team, any and all equipment you might need?” 

Bruce stares at him, frozen to the spot. What. The fuck. Is happening? 

“A hundred million, shall we say?” Tony asks rhetorically, and scribbles something else down. He signs it with a flourish, holds the pen between his teeth, and rips the cheque out of the book before holding it out to Bruce. 

He doesn't take it. He just stares. 

It's legit. It's a legitimate cheque for $100 million addressed to Culver University and he could take it and have it cashed and use it to fund his research, his passion project, the thing everyone had told him repeatedly to move on from. 

One last conference, he said, and then he'd move on. 

He takes a tentative step closer, and Tony waves the paper impatiently. 

“I can't.” Bruce says eventually. Sometimes he wishes he were less sensible. “It doesn't matter how rich you are, there's no way you can just hand off a cheque for $100 million. Who the hell do you think you are?” Tony considers that for a second, and shrugs. 

Without hesitation, Tony rips the cheque in two. Bruce tries to ignore the little glimmer of hope that abruptly died in the pit of his stomach. One half flutters to the floor, but Tony scribbles something else again on the blank reverse, and finally, eventually, stands up to leave. 

He hands the scrap of cheque to Bruce, the scrawl of ONE HUNDRED MI— visible before the tear, and he flips it over. 

It's a phone number. 

“You're right.” Tony grins, tucking the pen into his pocket. “I should speak to my lawyers, get the money drawn up into a proper fund so you'll be guaranteed it for the duration of the research. And, of course, outlining my share of the profits when it becomes worth a lot more than this.” He shrugs at the remains of the  _ hundred million dollar _ pledge like it’s loose change, and Bruce’s mouth is still hanging open. He remembers eventually how to close it, but is still too shocked to speak. 

Bruce knows how science funding works. This is going to fall through before a single cent enters his research budget. There’s no way Tony actually has that much money to chuck away on the vague promise of income possibly decades in the future. It’s ridiculous. 

Is it possible he’s actually still asleep? He pinches himself just to be sure, and Tony snorts at him, standing up. “Enjoy your weekend, Banner. I’m sure we’ll see each other very soon.” 

He lets himself out, and Bruce stares as he closes the bedroom door behind him, shaking his head in total disbelief. 

*

Betty smirks at him when he staggers down for breakfast that morning, knowing he looks like shit and that he overslept and that he  _ really  _ needed coffee right now. Late night calls are not conducive to productive mornings. 

“Someone had a late night last night.” She grins, a fork full of egg hovering only halfway to her mouth, eyes twinkling mischievously. 

Bruce shrugs, not planning to tell her about his ridiculous encounter with Tony Stark because he has no intentions of getting her hopes up. “You know. Strange bed. Couldn’t sleep.” He lies, stealing a half slice of toast from her plate and shoving it into his mouth. He is famished and in desperate need of coffee. After the second Tony experience, he hadn’t even tried to get back to sleep, his brain wide awake but split between thinking about what he can accomplish with that money, and reminding himself it is  _ never  _ going to actually happen. 

“Get your own breakfast, Banner. You’ve already paid for it so you may as well get your money’s worth.” She points out, batting his hand away as he tries to go back for a sausage, and he grins, chastened. He gets up, heads over to a stack of plates at the end of a queue of people, and goes through the whole charade of shuffling along the line, grabbing toast, eggs, bacon, fruit, cereal and juice. It is gratuitous, sure, but as Betty has already pointed out, it’s essentially free since the university is paying for the trip in full. Since when has anyone exercised restraint when it comes to free breakfast buffets? 

Most importantly, though, is the still agonisingly long line for the inept coffee machine, spewing out tiny cups of weak, watery caffeine. This isn’t the time for coffee snobbery though. It’s a dire situation. Bruce even risks the ire of the person behind him by downing the scalding drink and sticking his cup straight back under the spout for a second cup before moving away. She tuts under her breath but Bruce cannot bring himself to even apologise. He needs this, okay. 

“Bruce! Hey, Bruce!” He spins around at the sound of his name, desperately trying not to lose any toast from his plate as his breakfast wobbles dangerously on its tray. 

It’s Tony. 

“Oh. Uh. Hi.” He says nervously. Tony is holding a plate stacked high with waffles and bacon and maple syrup and looks totally unashamed. 

He nudges the woman next to him, a tall, very attractive redheaded woman, who glances him up and down curiously. Bruce wishes he has a free hand to self-consciously flatten his hair; he is aware of what a mess he looks right now and blames Tony entirely. “So you’re Dr. Banner.” She says finally, a look on her face that he is totally incapable of reading. Bruce feels like an animal in a zoo--all he can do is nod. “It takes a lot to get Tony this excited.” 

“Oh. Um. Thanks?” He tries, glancing over his shoulder to where Betty is sat watching the exchange with interest. Bruce is certain that Betty, as well-informed as she is, knows exactly who he is talking to. He himself isn’t so sure. 

“You come to New York often?” She asks promptly, and his eyes snap back to her, blushing slightly. 

“Huh? Oh. Um, not that often, but I can—” 

“Next time you’re in New York, stop by Stark Tower.” She says. It’s not a question, or even an invitation. It’s an instruction. “I’ll let you enjoy your breakfast.” 

Tony beams behind her, sending him a quick thumbs up and obnoxious grin, before lifting his hand to his ear and making a ‘call me’ motion. Bruce has no idea what’s going on. He can only nod dumbly before the woman turns away, leaving him standing in the middle of the restaurant, more than just Betty’s eyes fixed on him in curiosity. He hastens back to her, sitting down with his back to the majority of the room but unfortunately facing her still. “How do you know Pepper Potts?” She asks curiously, craning her neck over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the exquisitely dressed woman sitting on the other side of the room. “You never mentioned that.” 

“Pepper Po--oh my god.” He says, wondering how he ever fucking got through a PhD when he is so appallingly slow. “That was Pepper Potts. CEO of Stark Industries Pepper Potts.” 

Betty tilts her head in confusion. “Um. Yeah.” Her eyes narrow, and Bruce really wishes he were better at faking his reactions. “Bruce, what’s going on?” She asks suspiciously, and Bruce curses his inability to react quickly to new situations. It is clear now that something happened, and he can only wait for Betty to jump to the wrong conclusion. “Oh my god! You  _ did _ pull last night!” She crows triumphantly, loud enough for some in their locale to turn around in surprise. Bruce hisses at her to shut up, realising his mistake immediately as she hastens to point out that wasn’t a denial. 

“I didn’t  _ pull  _ anyone.” He insists, hoping, praying that she keeps her voice down. The last thing he needs is Tony to overhear this. He would probably die right here and now from pure embarrassment. 

“Then how come you’re suddenly best buddies with Pepper Potts?” She demands, and Bruce knows he’s not getting out of this without a satisfactory answer. In the decision between getting her hopes up for funding, and Betty telling everyone he pulled Tony Stark, there is a clear winner. 

He tells her everything. For a moment she is silent, and then she laughs. “Bullshit. You so pulled last night.” 

“Why would  _ Potts  _ be talking to me if I had pulled Tony?” He challenges, latching onto every flaw in her extremely flawed logic. 

She shrugs. “I hear they’re pretty close.”

“She also handles all the cash through Stark Industries. Maybe she wanted to check I wasn't mental before she hands over a shit ton of money.” He argues back, shovelling toast into his mouth in the hope it’ll end the conversation. It doesn’t.

“Do you think you convinced her?” Betty teases, settling back in her chair, perhaps finally satisfied. Bruce thinks about it and honestly isn’t sure, but decides not to share that aloud and just ignores her instead. 

Betty isn’t bothered by his silence, still laughing hysterically at the fact that Tony Stark gave Bruce his phone number scrawled on the back of half of a destroyed hundred million dollar cheque. “He sure lives up to the stereotype, doesn’t he?” 

*

Bruce waits until he gets back home before calling Tony. They don’t bump into each other again during the conference, at least, not properly. Bruce does attend one of his presentations, and when he’s actually focussed on the matter at hand, it’s incredible. He gets side tracked easily, though. Betty teases him relentlessly about going to Tony’s speech, and no amount of indignantly showing her his meticulously planned schedule, where this particular event had been pencilled in weeks ago, would shut her up. 

“You have reached the Life Model Decoy of Tony Stark. Please leave a messa—”

“The Life… what?” Bruce says, utterly mystified, because he doesn’t recall the line ever ringing let alone going to voicemail. There’s a long pause, where he wonders if he should just hang up and try again later. 

“Oh! It’s Bruce, right? Hey. How you doing?” 

Bruce is still confused. “The  _ what _ ?”

“Don’t worry.” He dismisses. “I didn’t realise it was you. How’s Culver?” He asks, brushing away Bruce’s questions like he hasn’t even heard them. 

Bruce blinks. Okay then. He’s not sure what he expected, really, but it’s becoming clear that any facet of professionalism is out of the question. “Culver is… fine, I guess?” He tries. What he really means is ‘Culver is running out of money and I could really do with a several million dollar cash injection’, but he thinks that would be rude, his social ineptitude aside. “I’m… uh. I was wondering if next week sometime would be okay to come up to New York?” 

He nearly drops his phone in shock as Tony shouts excitedly in his ear. “Seriously? When? We can send a plane. Or pay for your flights. You need somewhere to stay? We have a guest suite in the tower with your name on it.”

Bruce’s shock doesn’t dissipate, his hand shaking slightly as it sinks in that wow, this actually might happen. “Um. I was thinking Thursday?” 

There’s no response for a few seconds, a scuffling noise as if someone is wrestling the phone from Tony’s grip, and when a voice returns, it’s female. 

“Hello, Dr Banner. It’s Pepper Potts here. How does the 11.36 out of Richmond sound?” She asks swiftly, and he’s impressed. Seriously. That took  _ seconds.  _ He can only stammer his affirmation as she takes his details, before reciting back a flight number. He scrabbles around for something to write on, before snarching up the closest thing to him and writing down the number on the back of a Chinese take out menu. “And of course, you’re very welcome to stay with us for the duration of your visit. We look forward to seeing you Thursday.” 

The line clicks as she hangs up and Bruce still isn't sure this is real. 

His phone beeps. It's an email confirmation of the flight, 11.36 from Richmond to JFK. 

Betty isn't going to believe this.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeeeeeeeah. When I started writing this, it was meant to be "Tony and Bruce having a one night conference bang" but then it got away from me and this happened instead. Soz. Like, in another world I would write more of this but I know I never will so I figured I'd just post what I have. *shrugs*


End file.
